Bookkeeping services
Bookkeeping is the input layer under every other financial decision a startup makes: what a P&L actually says, what a tax return can claim, what an investor sees the moment diligence opens. It's also the one line item that's cheap to keep current and expensive to fix once it's fallen behind, which is exactly why it's worth getting right from the first month rather than the month someone finally asks to see it.
"Bookkeeping" gets used loosely, but the actual work is specific. At its core, it's the monthly discipline of recording, categorizing, and reconciling every transaction against a real chart of accounts, then closing the books so the numbers are trustworthy enough to build a decision on.
Every transaction categorized correctly, every month, instead of a backlog that piles up.
Every account matched to the actual bank and credit card statements, so the books tie out.
A real P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, delivered every month, not reconstructed at year-end.
A running record of what's needed and what's already been collected, so nothing gets chased down twice.
That's distinct from accounting, the higher-level work built on top of clean books: tax strategy, a monthly close that produces a real trial balance, and the judgment calls that turn a ledger into a decision. Bookkeeping is what makes that layer possible. Skip it or let it slip, and everything built on top of it, tax filings, board reporting, a fundraise, inherits the gap.
"Bookkeeping services" isn't one fixed bundle across providers, or even across Staxiom's own tiers. Transaction categorization, reconciliation, and monthly reporting are the floor on every tier. Payroll processing and accounts payable/receivable management sit outside bookkeeping on the entry tiers, available as add-ons, and only become fully included once a company moves to full tax advisory.
An R&D tax credit study and filing works the same way: it's never bundled automatically into bookkeeping, it's an add-on available if the company actually qualifies, since not every business has qualifying research activity to claim against. Worth asking any provider to spell out exactly which of these sit inside the base fee versus billed separately, since that's where two similarly-priced bookkeeping quotes can end up covering very different amounts of actual work.
Notice and audit representation and return amendments follow the same pattern: not offered at all on bookkeeping-only, an add-on once tax filing is added, and included outright at the top tier. It's worth knowing which bucket a specific need falls into before an actual IRS notice shows up, not after, since that's a bad time to discover something isn't covered.
A small business owner running steady, predictable revenue can often get away with sloppy books for a while. A startup can't, because the books get read by more people, sooner, and under more pressure. An investor doing diligence before a term sheet, a buyer's finance team before an LOI, a lender before a credit line, all of them are going to ask for the same thing: diligence-ready books, clean and current enough to hand over without a scramble.
It also affects money the company might otherwise leave unclaimed. Clean, well-categorized books are what actually substantiates an R&D tax credit claim or a Section 174 amended-return recovery, since both come down to being able to show, with real detail, what was spent and on what. A messy set of books doesn't just risk an audit question later, it makes it harder to claim money the company has already earned the right to.
Equity accuracy depends on it too. An option pool that's tracked loosely in a spreadsheet instead of reconciled against actual grants and exercises is how a company ends up surprised by its own fully diluted share count mid-raise, right when a dilution conversation is already happening under pressure.
Running a diligence brief before a raise or exit process starts, rather than after a term sheet has made it urgent, is the difference between fixing a books gap calmly and fixing it against someone else's deadline.
A SAFE or a convertible note sitting on the balance sheet isn't automatically debt or equity, it depends on the instrument's specific terms, and booking it the wrong way distorts exactly the numbers an investor reads most closely. Stock-based compensation has the same problem in reverse: the expense has to be recognized against a real, current 409A valuation, not a stale one, or the reported numbers quietly drift from reality every month the valuation ages past its window.
Engineering and product payroll deserves its own line of attention too, not because it's booked differently, but because it's the exact data an R&D tax credit study needs later: which employees, what percentage of their time, on what qualifying work. Categorizing that clearly every month, instead of trying to reconstruct it a year later from memory and old calendars, is the difference between a credit claim that's fast to substantiate and one that isn't worth the trouble.
Bookkeeping-only starts at $200/month on Staxiom's Tier 1 tier, and scales from there with revenue and transaction complexity, not a flat rate regardless of size. Roughly, the fee runs 1.5-3% of monthly revenue for an early-stage company, tapering to under 1% once revenue passes a few million a year, with a $200/month floor either way.
Tax filing and advisory layer on top of bookkeeping rather than replacing it, since a return or a strategy conversation is only as good as the books underneath it. That's covered on the full pricing page, along with exactly what's included at each tier.
Moving up a tier is a real conversation, not an automatic upsell. A company that's outgrown bookkeeping-only usually feels it directly: a return that needs filing, a notice that needs a real response, or a cash-flow decision that needs someone who already knows the books making the call, not a generic recommendation applied regardless of what's actually happening in the business.
Bookkeeping debt compounds like any other kind. A single uncategorized month is a quick fix. Six or twelve months of it, transactions piled up across every account, receipts that no longer have context, is a real project, not an afternoon, and it usually surfaces at the worst possible time: right when a tax deadline, a fundraise, or a lender request forces the question.
The math on catching up is straightforward even before running it: every month of backlog is roughly another month of reconstruction work later, at reconstruction rates rather than current-month rates. The catch-up cost calculator gives a rough read on what a specific backlog is actually costing in time, which is usually the number that makes staying current look cheap by comparison.
A few real signals, not vibes: every account reconciles to its actual bank or card statement with no unexplained gap. Every transaction sits in a category that would make sense to someone who wasn't there when it happened. The books close every month, not once a year under deadline pressure. And someone could hand the current month's financials to an outsider tomorrow without needing to caveat them first.
If any of those isn't true, that's usually not a sign the company needs a bigger accounting team, it's a sign the monthly discipline slipped somewhere. That's the specific gap outsourced bookkeeping exists to close, and it's cheaper to close early than to close the week before a data room opens.
One more real test: ask what happens if the current bookkeeper is unreachable for a month. If the answer is "everything stops," the books are dependent on one person's memory rather than a documented process, which is its own kind of risk regardless of how accurate that person happens to be right now.
We've sat on the other side of diligence. One co-founder also ran EY's West Coast R&D Tax Credit practice for thirteen years — that's the standard your books get held to here, not a lighter one because you're early.
A real cleanup, not a surface pass, so every account actually reconciles.
Categorized, reconciled, and closed on a schedule, not caught up once a year.
Filing deadlines, R&D credits, structure decisions, surfaced before they're urgent.
Yes, even pre-revenue. A Delaware C-corp owes franchise tax and has a return to file whether or not it has revenue, and burn, runway, and cap table accuracy all depend on the books being current. The bigger risk isn't skipping accounting entirely, it's assuming it can wait: a year of uncategorized transactions is far more expensive to untangle later, especially right before a raise, than it would have been to keep current from month one.
Staxiom's bookkeeping-only tier starts at $200/month, with the exact fee scaling by revenue: roughly 1.5-3% of monthly revenue for an early-stage company, tapering to under 1% once revenue passes a few million a year, applied monthly with a $200 floor. Adding tax filing or advisory on top raises the starting price, not the bookkeeping fee itself.
Bank and card feeds combined with rules-based categorization handle the bulk of routine transactions automatically. What software alone doesn't handle well: judgment calls on ambiguous transactions, catching miscategorizations before they compound, and the monthly reconciliation that confirms the books actually tie out to the bank. Automation speeds up the mechanical part of bookkeeping; it doesn't replace the review that keeps it accurate.
Once monthly transaction volume or complexity passes what a founder can accurately handle in an hour or two a month, or before any event where the books will actually get scrutinized, a fundraise, an acquisition conversation, or a lender review. Waiting until diligence is already underway to fix the books turns a routine cleanup into a deadline problem.
Add your revenue and website for a full review, reviewed by a CPA who ran EY's West Coast R&D Tax Credit practice for 13 years.